A California oversight board ruled on Thursday that state regulators mishandled the permit renewal for Phibro-Tech, a hazardous waste plant in Los Angeles County, but let the facility keep operating while they reconsider.
Residents had asked the Board of Environmental Safety to revoke the permit, CalMatters reported. No one had asked the board to pull a facility’s permit before in its five-year history. Some of the plant’s neighbors live 550 feet from it, and it has run for nearly 30 years on a permit that expired in 1996. The company’s notice of appeal lists the plant in Santa Fe Springs, near the Los Nietos neighborhood.
The Department of Toxic Substances Control renewed the permit on Feb. 28, 2025, the first renewal in the facility’s history, according to the board’s appeal docket. The community group Neighbors Against Phibro-Tech and the company both appealed within a month. The board heard both cases over two days at the Montebello City Council chambers.
The board agreed with the neighbors, who are represented by Earthjustice, that the department’s public record was incomplete and that regulators hadn’t shown they fully reviewed the company’s compliance history. The department recorded 29 violations at Phibro-Tech from 2013 to 2022, among them failing to clean up leaks and treating waste its permit doesn’t allow. Officials say the plant has improved since then. The state is still suing it over alleged violations of hazardous waste laws.
The department itself “recognizes that there’s a significant concern for (Phibro-Tech’s) ability or willingness to comply,” said Andrew Rakestraw, the board’s chair. “Those are two issues that really get at the core of the permit decision, and so what I would have expected to see here is some connection between this significant concern … and their subsequent decision to grant this permit.”
On Wednesday, Wayne Lorentzen, who leads the department’s permitting division, had told the board the record was public and contained everything his staff relied on. “That same administrative record provides specific evidence to refute the allegation that (the department) did not consider Phibro-Tech’s complete compliance history,” he said.
Earthjustice wanted more than a finding of error. “They agreed with us that permitting violated the law in three different ways in issuing this permit,” said Byron Chan, one of its lawyers. “How many illegal acts does permitting have to do until (the board denies) the permit?”
The board can ask the department to deny a permit, said Greg Forest, its lawyer. Board members didn’t discuss that option.
“It’s important to acknowledge the victory that happened today,” said Esme Levy, another Earthjustice lawyer. “But the board has the opportunity or had the opportunity to go further.”
Phibro-Tech won its appeal, too. The company had argued that the department should have issued a 10-year permit, not a five-year one, and its petition for review said a shorter term requires a finding that it is “necessary to protect human health and safety or the environment.” The board found the department hadn’t explained the five-year term and ordered it to justify the length. It also told regulators to strip out waste-treatment rules that the company said don’t apply to it.
“What we’re asking for is not a specific term, but to show the work,” said Rhys Williams, a board member.
Robert Martin, a lawyer for Phibro-Tech, said he appreciated the board’s consideration but declined to comment until he had read its written order.
A week before the hearing, the company and the department settled a third dispute, with regulators agreeing to certify Phibro-Tech’s tanks for five years instead of three. Mr. Chan said the deal was an attempt “to try to avoid the public scrutiny of the board.” The department didn’t comment on the settlement or the criticism. At the hearing, Mandi Bane, a deputy director who oversees its hazardous waste program, called the board’s review “a great addition.”
Phibro-Tech says it has been singled out. In a 2024 cross-complaint, it accused the department of violating its due process rights, saying regulators had inspected it “considerably more frequently than other permitted facilities” over 10 years and cited it disproportionately as a result.
“To think that the whole time that I’ve been alive (Phibro-Tech) has been operating kind of under the radar, with little consequences, with very little oversight, it’s just so frustrating and so disheartening,” said Jordan Salcido, who lives nearby.
The Legislature created the board in 2022 after years of weak oversight at the department. Mr. Rakestraw told lawmakers this year that it had made the department more transparent and fiscally sound, though he said much of the agency’s work falls outside the board’s jurisdiction. “Many stakeholders view the board as California’s hazardous waste watchdog,” he said. “In reality … we have decision-making authority in a handful of areas.”
The board has 30 days to finalize its decision. Until then the renewed permit stays on hold, and Phibro-Tech keeps operating under its original 1991 permit. The department said it would wait for the board’s written direction before acting.